The Stage Ride

Vacationers heading towards Nebraska's
Pine Ridge, and the Black Hills beyond, have the
prospect of a pleasant journey through spectacular scenery. The
trip hasn't always been such
an enjoyable jaunt, as this traveler discovered in 1877:

"Will I ever forget that stage ride?
I should rather think not. I had experimented on short
distance, say from the hotel to the depot, and had occasionally
rode a mile or two out, but to
get into a coach with eight others, nearly all large men, when
the utmost capacity was three
on each of the three seats, and start off for a ride of three
hundred miles, with stops only for
changes of horses and meals, was something entirely fresh and
new for me. The time passed
pleasantly enough until evening came.

"We held long interviews, smoked our
cigars, and drank our iced tea. It isn't safe to drink
water after leaving the railroad some of the wells and springs
are so strongly impregnated
with alkali that the water is very unhealthy. There were eight
flasks of liquor, one bottle of
wine, and my solitary bottle of iced tea inside the coach.

"But when night came, Oh. There was
the rub. Then the trouble commenced. We were
tired, our eyelids dropped, our heads were nodding, we were all
wrapped in our blankets, but
we couldn't sleep. A sudden jolt of the coach (and they were
frequent) would wake us all up,
and then we would laugh at each other. None would admit that
they had been napping.

"Suddenly the coach would stop. Were
we in the hands of road agents? No. Were the
Indians upon us? No. The voice of the driver was heard as the
stage stood at the foot of a
long hill, 'Come, boys, exercise yourselves,' and we would get
out, and in the cold night air,
we would walk four or five miles up hill and through deep sand.

"We would then all get back into the
coach, blanket ourselves, nod a few minutes, get a few
good bumps on the head, sing a song, nod again, then get out
and walk to please the driver,
you know. So the night passed, and morning dawned at last."
--Omaha Daily Republican